Did Hitler Have Only One Testicle?

Among conspiracy buffs, Hitler having only one testicle is what is known as the lone-nut theory.

The case of Hitler's missing testicle is one of many bizarre twists in the life of Adolf Hitler. [Another is the never-proven allegation that Hitler's paternal grandfather was Jewish].

Hitler was really called Schicklgruber

Would Germans have been prepared to greet each other with a hearty "Heil Schicklgruber" every day?

Could Hitler have become a dictator if he had used his real name, Schicklgruber, or would this have been just too ridiculous aname for a dictator?

These are the kind of questions that continue to be discussed regularly on Internet discussion sites.

They are, however, historically pointless questions, as Schicklgruber never was Hitler’s name.

Hitler’s father had been born out of the wedlock to Maria Anna Schicklgruber.

Yet he had changed his name to Hitler, the name of his step-father, who by all likelihood also was his biological father, well before Adolf Hitler was born.

While the claim that Adolf Hitler was really called Adolf Schicklgruber is historical nonsense, it is nevertheless telling that people continue to spread the claim.

It points to the urge of people to turn Hitler into an object of ridicule.

Hitler had a Jewish grandfather

The idea that the nemesis of the Jews of Europe was, according the logic of his own Nuremberg laws, a "quarter-Jew" himself dates back to the attempt of some of his opponents to prevent Hitler from coming to power.

As Hitler’s father was born out of wedlock, the claim was that Hitler had been fathered by the head of the Jewish household for which Hitler’s grandmother Maria Anna had worked for a while.

If the results of the unethical DNA testing of Hitler’s Austrian and American relatives, carried out a few years ago by the Belgian journalist Jean-Paul Mulders, are to be trusted, we now finally know for certain that the step-father of Hitler’s father was indeed his biological father and therefore Hitler did not have a Jewish grand-father.

Yet what may be more important than the question of whether objectively speaking Hitler had a Jewish grandfather is what Hitler himself thought of the matter.

It is likely Hitler feared being the grandson of a Jew.

He seems to have commissioned Hans Frank, his chief jurist, to look into the claim that he had Jewish ancestry in 1930.

Hitler fathered a child in World War I before losing one of his testicles

Another "fact" which was exposed as untrue by Jean-Paul Mulders, if his DNA testing is to be trusted, is the idea –only revived by a French news magazine last year that Hitler fathered a child with a French woman during the First World War.

Most other evidence also suggests that Hitler was neither heterosexual nor, as some claim, homosexual but asexual.

Then again, German authorities seem to have made payments to Hitler’s French family during World War Two which is odd if no relationship of any kind had existed between Hitler and the mother of Hitler’s purported son.

The belief popularized by an English Second World War rhyme that Hitler had only one "ball" was recently claimed to have finally proven to be true as a result of newly available testimony of a German medical orderly who claimed to have treated Hitler after being wounded in his groin.

However, nothing in this story really adds up.

A bit of doggerel goes something like the following, originally sung by British Tommies during World War II to the tune of the "Colonel Bogey March":

Hitler has only got one ball,
Göring has two, but very small;
Himmler is very sim'lar,
And Göbbels has no balls at all.

"Hitler Has Only Got One Ball” is a British song that mocks Nazi leaders by referring to their lack of testicles. Multiple variants of the lyrics exist, generally sung as four-line verses to the tune of the “Colonel Bogey March”.

The numerous versions, often obscene, reflect the enthusiasm with which it was first adopted as a British Army marching-song, then as a popular song of defiance against Adolf Hitler’s Nazi-German regime in the other branches of the British armed forces, and amongst British civilians, from 1940 onwards.

In the words of Greg Kelley:

"As a means of ridiculing the Nazis, 'Hitler Has Only Got One Ball' became immensely popular among Allied troops, who in transmitting this song were exercising something of a wartime convention by demeaning the sexual faculties of enemy leaders.

"But the mockery extended beyond just the Nazis’ sexual capacities. Since the 1920s, the words balls or ballsy had come to denote notions of courage, nerve, or fortitude. In that sense, defective testicles rendered the Nazis defective soldiers.

"This song’s itemized taxonomy of malformed German genitalia—the monorchid, the micro-orchid, the anorchid—was particularly forceful, and satisfying, to Allied soldiers in that it scattered satiric buckshot across the whole Nazi high command [Hitler; Hermann Göring, commander in chief of the Luftwaffe; Heinrich Himmler, Reichsführer of the SS; and Göbbels, Reich Minister of Propaganda]".

Göring had one child, Himmler three, and Josef Göbbels [with "no balls at all"] had six...

It has been stated that Hitler's autopsy revealed that he was indeed monorchic, but the confirmation comes from Soviet sources who may have had Propaganda reasons for the assertion. When mentioned, the song asserts that Hitler lacked the right testicle, but the autopsy states that it was the left testicle that was missing.

In his autobiography "Fringe Benefits", well-connected Anglo-Irish gadabout and publicist Donough O’Brien says that the original was written as propaganda in August 1939 by his father, Toby O’Brien, a publicist for the British Council at the time.

This version started with the words “Göring has only got one ball”, and went on to imply that Hitler had two small ones. In virtually all later versions, the positions are reversed. The statement that Himmler was “sim’lar” appears in all versions.

The final line of this original and some later forms ends with the word play that Göebbels had “no balls”. Both these variations argue strongly in favour of O’Brien’s version being a very early version, and a "Daily Mail" report of the time states that it was “attributed to someone not unconnected with our old friend the British Council”.

O’Brien’s version

Göring has only got one ball
Hitler’s [are] so very small
Himmler’s so very similar
And Göbbels has no balls at all

O’Brien’s claims have not been substantiated, and no author has ever been identified for the more popular versions that begin “Hitler has only got one ball”.

The song has frequently been heard and seen. The lyrics were not used in "The Bridge on the River Kwai" [1957] because they were considered too vulgar. Bette Midler sang them in her concert film "Divine Madness" and they were also heard on the British TV sitcom 'Allo 'Allo. There is no known attempt by anyone to claim or enforce a copyright on the lyrics..

It has been suggested that the pre-Glasnost Soviet descriptions of what remained of Hitler’s corpse reported his monorchism [having only one functional testicle] at the suggestion of Guy Burgess and/or Kim Philby, as part of their making a joke, based on this song, that they could expect the British population and secret services, if not those of the USA or USSR, would get.

Whatever the reason for Hitler’s alleged monorchism becoming a popular myth, there was psychodynamic literature, produced outside the USSR after WWII, which sought to explain his personality and behaviour, as a charismatic, genocidal megalomaniac, which drew on his alleged congenital “semi-castration” and/or the child-rearing practices of his family.

It's customary, of course, for soldiers to impugn the sexual capacities of enemy leaders. [Another verse from the era goes, "Whistle while you work/Hitler was a jerk/Mussolini bit his weenie/Now it doesn't work"]. But the troops may have had some reason to believe Hitler really was playing with a short set, so to speak.

As a soldier in the German army during World War I, the future dictator was wounded in the Battle of the Somme in October, 1916. Sources differ on the precise location of the wound, but some say it was in the thigh or the groin. Conceivably some anonymous poet in the British Army heard this and used it as the basis for the above mentioned ode, although at this late date it's hard to say for sure.

[Incidentally, similar claims have been made about Hermann Göring [he supposedly lost one of his jollies during the Beer Hall Putsch] and Spanish dictator Francisco Franco.

So far, the reputation of Stalin's testicles appears to be intact].

Spain's Franco "had one testicle"
BBC News
18 May 2009

A new book claims the Spanish dictator, General Francisco Franco, may have had more in common with Adolf Hitler than previously known - having one testicle.

Much like the Nazi leader, Franco's loss stemmed from an injury he suffered in battle, his doctor's granddaughter told the historian Jose Maria Zavala.

Franco was wounded in the lower abdomen at El Biutz, near Ceuta, in June 1916.

Biographers have long speculated this affected the reproductive organs of the dictator, who ruled from 1939 to 1975.

However, he did have a daughter, Carmen Franco y Polo, in 1926.

Last year, documents came to light containing an account by a medic who treated Hitler during the Battle of the Somme in 1916.

Dr Johan Jambor told his priest that Hitler had been injured in the abdomen and had lost a testicle. He said the first question Hitler had asked him was: "Will I be able to have children?"

In his new book, Mr Zavala quotes Dr Ana Puigvert as recalling that her grandfather, Antonio Puigvert, a urologist known to have had Franco as a patient, had told her the dictator had confided in him.

"Franco was monorchid - he had only one testicle," she said.

Franco was a captain in the Spanish army when, in late June 1916, he was shot in the lower abdomen while defending the modern-day Spanish enclave of Ceuta on Morocco's Mediterranean coast.

In 1936, he joined the military uprising that led to the Spanish Civil War and assumed leadership of the fascist Falange Party.

Three years later, with the aid of Nazi Germany and fascist Italy, he won the war and established a dictatorship. Franco kept Spain neutral during World War II, after which he declared Spain a monarchy with himself as regent.

In 1969, he announced that on his death he would be succeeded by Juan Carlos I, grandson of Spain's last reigning king, hoping that he would maintain his regime.

However, after his death in 1975, the new king moved to dismantle the authoritarian institutions and restore democratic rule.

At this point we have to delve into the mystery surrounding Hitler's demise.

On 1 May 1945, German radio announced that Hitler had been killed fighting at the head of his troops. But the Russians captured the Führer's Bunker, and nobody in the West ever saw the body.

Rumors swirled that Hitler had escaped. To resolve the issue, the British assigned H.R. Trevor-Roper, later a well-known British historian, to investigate. After interrogating witnesses, Trevor-Roper concluded that Hitler and his girlfriend Eva Braun had shot themselves on 30 April, and that the bodies were cremated shortly afterward.

The Russians, however, maintained that Hitler had managed to escape.

At the Potsdam conference in July, Stalin said he believed Hitler was in Spain or Argentina. This was the official line until 1950, when the Soviets unveiled a film called "The Fall of Berlin" that depicted Hitler and Braun snuffing themselves with poison. But they did not say how they arrived at this conclusion.

In 1955 the Russians released several German prisoners who had been present during Hitler's last days, one of whom told of burying Hitler's remains in a bomb crater.

Trevor-Roper interviewed the men, and on the basis of their comments deduced that the Russians had exhumed the bodies and examined them in May, 1945.

This was confirmed to his satisfaction in the 1960s, when Russian journalists published accounts of the search for Hitler.

One such book published in 1968 was particularly interesting, and it's here we get back to the question of Hitler's missing organs.

The book included the report of the autopsy performed on Hitler's body by Russian pathologists. This contained the startling news that Hitler's "left testicle could not be found either in the scrotum or on the spermatic cord inside the inguinal canal, or in the small pelvis.

This revelation struck many as suspicious.

None of Hitler's doctors or attendants had ever mentioned anything about a missing testicle, and his medical records were silent on the subject. A woman who claimed to have been his lover said he was normally equipped. Moreover, the autopsy report said Hitler's body showed no external wounds, even though all the German witnesses mentioned a shot through the head.

Hitler's World War I company commander, however, offered some support for the Russian finding. He said he'd discovered Hitler's missing testicle as a result of a wartime VD exam.

Questions about the authenticity of the Russian autopsy records were more or less resolved in 1972.

Dr. Reidar Sognnaes, a dental expert at the University of California at Los Angeles, compared the Soviet data with previous X-Rays of Hitler's skull and pronounced the former genuine. [Sognnaes used similar methods to confirm that a body dug up in Berlin was that of Hitler's secretary, Martin Bormann].

Historians with a weakness for Freudian woolgathering have had a field day with this news.

Perhaps the most elaborate treatment was "The Psychopathic God" by Robert G.L. Waite. Waite believed Hitler's left testicle either failed to descend at puberty or was missing at birth. He regarded the deficiency as one of the formative experiences of Hitler's life, and said it contributed to all manner of psychosexual complications. He stopped short, however, of saying it caused World War II.

Why did the Russians wait so long to reveal the autopsy results?

Trevor-Roper thinks Stalin arbitrarily decided that Hitler had escaped and compelled everybody else to go along. Later, he thinks, the Russians decided to keep things murky lest the Führer's death and/or remains somehow inspire future generations of Nazis. They may have suppressed evidence about the bullet wounds in order to make Hitler's demise seem less heroic.

Others, of course, have their own ideas. They see the missing testicle as evidence that the man who died in 1945 was a double.

They think the Russians faked the dental evidence for unknown reasons and that Maria Schickelgruber's grandson ended up leading a life of ease in some South American banana republic.

You never know. After all, Trevor-Roper, the staunchest proponent of the Hitler-is-dead theory, was the same guy who pronounced the so-called Hitler diaries authentic.

- Cecil Adams
The Straight Dope
20 February 1987

Adolf Hitler's possible monorchism [the condition of only having one testicle] has been a fringe subject among historians and academics researching the German leader. The rumour is considered either a plausible fact or an urban myth. The British military song "Hitler Has Only Got One Ball" may have been the origin of the story. Nevertheless research, eyewitness testimony and historical study have not been able to prove or disprove the rumor.

Hitler's doctor Erwin Giesing and his personal physician Theodor Morell disregard the idea of Hitler's monorchism and say there was nothing wrong with Hitler's testicles.

In November 2008, the discovery of an eye-witness account on how Hitler was treated after being shot on the Western Front during World War I was announced in the press.

According to these reports, a former German Army Medic named Johan Jambor gave an account to a Polish priest and amateur historian, Franciszek Pawlar, in the 1960s, of how he saved Hitler's life in 1916 after a groin injury and saw that he had lost a testicle. Pawlar's record of the conversation was discovered by Pawlar's relatives and published by Polish author Grzegorz Wawoczny.

According to the German tabloid "Bild", a surviving friend of Jambor's, Blassius Hanczuch, has confirmed Jambor's story, adding that Jambor and his co-rescuers dubbed Hitler "screamer" (Schreihals) because, as they were carrying him away, they came under French fire and had to temporarily abandon him, upon which he began to scream very loudly, imploring them to come back and threatening them with court martial if they left him behind.

Military records show that Hitler was wounded in 1916 during the Battle of the Somme, which has been described as a wound to the groin or in the left thigh when a shell exploded in the dispatch runners' dugout.

Recent historians, such as Ian Kershaw, conclude the wound was to Hitler's left thigh.

In 1968, the Soviet autopsy on Hitler's remains was released. This document, which was allegedly compiled shortly after the conclusion of World War II on the basis of examination of the remains claimed to be those of the Führer stated he was monorchid. It stated: "The autopsy performed by the Red Army pathologists on Hitler's body... [produced clear] findings:The left testicle could not be found either in the scrotum or on the spermatic cord inside the inguinal canal, or in the small pelvis[...]"

Robert G. L. Waite, in his book "The Psychopathic God: Adolf Hitler" [1977], accepted the accuracy of this evidence:

"Since the matter is of considerable importance to the psychological development of Hitler from infancy onward, let us pause here and come to grips with the problem of the Führer's testicles.

"It can now be affirmed that the British Tommies were right all along in the first line of their version of the Colonel Bogey March, they were although manifestly mistaken in the last—that is to say, unless Göbbels' six children were the progeny of adoption, paternal surrogacy or some hitherto unconsidered, presumably unpalatable 'Gott mit uns' form of divine intervention".

Ribald speculation yielded to medical evidence only after World War II when the Soviet government released the report of an autopsy performed by the Red Army Pathologists on Adolf Hitler’s body, whose partially burned remains were found in May 1945 in a shallow grave outside the Führer’s Berlin air raid shelter.

[Although the autopsy was performed on 8 May 1945, the report was not released until 1968, in a book published in both German and English. See Lev Bezymenski, “The Death of Adolf Hitler: Unknown Documents from Soviet Archives", N.Y.C., 1968.]

The relevant medical findings are clear: "The left testicle could not be found either in the scrotum or on the spermatic cord inside the inguinal canal, or in the small pelvis …"

Before pursuing the matter any further, it would be well to establish the identity of the corpse the Russians examined. Positive identification could not be made only after comparing Soviet evidence of the teeth of their cadaver with the X-Rays, diagrams, and pictures of Hitler’s head and teeth which were found after the war by U.S. authorities in the files of Hitler’s doctors and his dentist, a 1911 graduate of the University of Pennsylvania Dental School named Hugo Johannes Blaschke.

Werner Maser, who is sometimes considered the world’s leading authority on details of Hitler’s life and who claimed to have special knowledge of the dental evidence, was confident that the Soviet Autopsy was fraudulent.

Hugh Trevor-Roper of Oxford joined him in ridiculing its findings [See Maser’s letters to the editor of "Die Zeit", 21 December 1971, 29 February 1972, and his biography, "Hitler"; Trevor-Roper, "Sunday Times" [London], 18 February, 1973.

But after investigating claims and counter-claims, West Germany’s distinguished newspaper "Die Zeit" concluded in 1972 that Maser and Trevor-Roper were mistaken and that the Russians were correct: the teeth of their corpse were indeed the teeth of Adolf Hitler.

The conclusion has been independently verified by American and Norwegian specialists in dental medicine. Writing in professional journals, they set forth the evidence, showed conclusively that Maser misrepresented the facts, and affirmed that the teeth in question belonged to Hitler.

An American dentist who was formerly a captain in the U.S. Army, and who had access to evidence produced by interrogations of Dr. Blaschke in 1945/46, concluded:

“There is no reason to doubt the present Russian story that the identification of Hitler’s remains was successfully made on the basis of dental records". [Elsworth K. Kelly, D.D.S., in "Journal of California Dental Association" 41, [1965]

The most authoritative and detailed examination of the evidence, however, has been made by a Norwegian-American team of specialist in odontology.

With meticulous professional care they have gone over all the extant röntgenological, diagrammatic, and descriptive documents from Hitler’s files now in the U.S. National Archives and compared these data “tooth by tooth” with the photographic, diagrammatic, and descriptive autopsy data released by the Soviets. Their findings are clear and important:

"The individual identified by means of the Hitler files located in the U.S. National Archives … is the same person as that of the 1945 autopsy report published in 1968 on the basis of the previously unknown documents from Soviet Archives of 1945” [Reidar F. Sognnaes and Ferdinand Ström, “The Odontological Identification of Adolf Hitler: Definitive Documentation by X-rays, Interrogations and Autopsy Findings,” Acta Odontologica Scandinavica 31, 1973]

Two conclusions thus seem incontrovertible: the body on which the Soviet pathologists performed the autopsy was that of Adolf Hitler; and that the left testicle was missing.

Nevertheless, there are historians who still believe that Hitler’s sexual apparatus was normal and complete. They point to the undoubted fact that Hitler’s Vienna roommate, his valets, and two of his doctors, Morell and Giesing, all insisted that there was nothing at all unusual about Hitler’s testicles.

But the opinions of all these people are of dubious value on this question. All Hitler’s intimates agree that he never allowed the to see him completely disrobed. And even if they had an opportunity for casual observation, it would scarcely have been adequate to the task of verifying their claims about the contents of his scrotum.

No doubt Doctors Morell and Giesing gave Hitler some sort of physical examination. But their assurances of genital normality are not persuasive. Morell was a quack and a sycophant who believed that his Führer and benefactor was completely normal in all respects. He asserted, for example, that Hitler had “no phobias or obsessions … no hallucinations, illusions or pananoiac trends”. [Morel testimony of 29 November 1945, “Hitler’s Doctors,” MIR]

As for SS Doctor Giesing, he told two quite different stories. In October 1945 he assured U.S. interrogators that when, as an ear specialist he was called in to examine Hitler’s ears after the bomb explosion of June 1944, he did not examine the Führer’s rectum or genitals. [See his testimony of 15 October 1945, “Hitler’s Doctors,” MIR]

Later, Giesing told Werner Maser that he had once asked his Führer to lift up his nightgown so that he could make a though examination. The SS doctor reported that he “could not establish that there were any abnormalities of the genitals“.

His inability to do so is understandable.

Even if the unlikely story were true, the examination was visual. Anomalies of the scrotum cannot be determined without palpitation. It is not likely that Hitler would have permitted an ear specialist -or anyone else- to squeeze his scrotum.

John Toland repeats a rumor that, sometime in 1933, Hitler was examined by an anonymous Berlin physician who allegedly “paid special attention to his penis and testicles“. [Maser "Hitler"; Toland, "Adolf Hitler"] Mr. Toland is unable to find any substantiation for this improbable story.

The evidence of the Soviet autopsy still stands.

We know the names of the five doctors who signed the report. They were ranking pathologists of the Red Army.

There would seem to be no reason why they would all compromise their reputation by submitting a fraudulent report - there was no discernible medical or political purpose to be served by reporting falsely that one of Adolf Hitler's testicles was missing.

What happened to it is a matter of conjecture.

Although Hitler might have mutilated himself late in life, there is specific evidence against this theory. Hitler's company commander during World War I reported that at that time Hitler had only one testicle.

He was positive about that fact because the army periodically conducted genital inspections for venereal disease. [Letter to "Die Zeit" 21 December 1971]

"Hitler's childhood and adult behavior indicates very strongly that his genitalia never were normal. He probably suffered either from congenital monorchism — that is, the absence of a testicle at birth — or from cryptorchism, and un-descended testicle.

"The complete absence of a testis in the inguinal canal or the small pelvis could be accounted for by acute atrophy, which could have rendered it undetectable to the Russian doctors, whose primary purpose, after all, was to find the cause of Hitler's death, not to investigate the contents of his scrotum. In any case, whether Hitler had monorchism or cryptorchism, only one testicle would have been present in the scrotal sack, and the psychological consequences would have been the same".

-- "The Psychopathic God: Adolf Hitler" by Robert G.L. Waite, Basic Books, N.Y.C., 1977

However as the release occurred at the height of the Cold War, its conclusions have been questioned in terms of Propaganda.

For instance journalist Ron Rosenbaum argues in his book "Explaining Hitler: The Search for the Origins of His Evil" that the Soviet autopsy of Hitler cannot be accepted as authoritative because the Führer's body was said to have been almost completely immolated after his suicide inside the Führerbunker. There was not enough sufficient remains for any proper analysis or findings to be conducted. Rosenbaum says that based on information from Hitler's own doctor and recantations by the compilers of the published form of the report, the Soviet autopsy report was a fabrication.

According to noted historian Ian Kershaw, the corpses of Eva Braun and Hitler were fully burned when the Red Army found them, and only a lower jaw with dental work could be identified as Hitler's remains.

The autopsy of the Soviet commission, whose findings were released in 1968, is incredible, for several reasons.

In the first place, it does not describe any bullet hole in Hitler's skull when it was corroborated by dozens of witnesses and contemporary historians that Hitler shot himself. Secondly, the Politburo had previously released a rumour that Hitler was, in fact, not dead, but rather, living in some banana republic somewhere, possibly in Argentina like Eichmann. This particular tidbit was only rescinded when the autopsy results were published.

Third, the Soviets may have only claimed Hitler was missing a testicle as a propaganda measure, to discredit and malign the dead Nazi leader - certainly not an unpopular trick of the regime. Fourthly, and perhaps most poignantly, it is unlikely that Hitler's corpse was ever recovered, having been burnt to a crisp by 200 litres of petrol and then flung to the four corners of the Reich Chancellery garden by Soviet artillery bombardments in the days leading up to 8 May.

According to Hitler's personal asjutant Otto Günsche:

"The remains were scattered and shellfire did the rest....The place where the corpses were placed lay under heavy artillery fire, with napalm and all kinds of calibres, so that it is not surprising that nothing of Hitler was found. The Russians were never in a position to display the remains of Hitler's body, which they certainly would have done if they had found it. If the Russians found Hitler's corpse, I would not have been questioned for such a long time - not only I but the others as well. The interrogations lasted for a very long time and they kept repeating the same questions time and again and finally the realization that they had not found the corpse gave me a sort of satisfaction".

It is perhaps the case that the autopsy was performed on Hitler's Doppelgänger, whose post-mortem picture is often touted as Hitler's.

An interview with the Soviet doctor, Lt. Col. Faust Shkaravski, who led Hitler's autopsy is in the extras section on the DVD of the 1970s ground breaking documentary "The World At War".

Shkaravski claims that those performing the autopsy unexpectedly found one testicle missing. The programme presents dental evidence showing an autopsy really was conducted; but as the interview was conducted in the 1970s, it also demonstrates how the findings were distorted for political reasons as Shkaravski states Hitler was categorically not shot in the head. However since the making of the series, more evidence has been found showing that Hitler shot himself in the right temple and that different versions of Hitler's fate were presented by the Soviet Union according to its political desires.

Everything You Need To Know About Hitler's "Missing" Testicle
And why we're so obsessed the Führer's sex life
By Ron Rosenbaum
Spectator
November 28, 2008

Somebody make it stop. This incessant fixation on Hitler's sexuality, on his alleged perversity.

I think it's fair to say that the very apex of cultural stupidity in our era is the compulsive conjunction of Hitler and sex. He was a "predatory" homosexual. He engaged in excretory practices with his underage half-niece. And, one of the most enduring, a myth I thought I had refuted once and for all but that now rears its head again: Hitler had only one testicle.

Isn't it obvious by now what this is about? Our need to prove that Hitler was not "normal," thus not like us, normal human nature thereby exculpated from producing a Hitler. It fills a need to reassure ourselves there is no Hitler potential in human potential. We're off the hook.

But despite the obviousness of it, it just doesn't stop.

Consider this passage from a recent "New York Times" book review of a new novel by A.N. Wilson called "Winnie and Wolf":

"There is a scatological Leitmotif in this narrative, morally figurative of the Nazi ambience. Watching Hitler deliver a speech from an upstairs window, Herr N. notes that with every patriotic phrase, 'the buttocks let out the quickfire whumps and cracks that accompanied the volleys firing from the mouth, and the room gradually filled with a gaseous sulphur odor.'

"He comes up with his 'flatulence theory': the idea that Hitler at the moment of orgasm would break wind. No woman could be expected not to laugh, and to Hitler this would be intolerable. But Winnie Wagner, with her hero-worship of the man and her great warmth of heart—with her, it would be different".

Right. Brilliant. Even novels and films about Nazis that don't feature Hitler somehow seem to have an unnatural quotient of sex.

Take "The Reader", the German best-seller [surprise!] and Oprah favorite in which a woman who served as a Nazi concentration camp guard later is subsequently sexually voracious with a teenage boy. Sex you will be able to see in great quantities in the soon-to-be-released film.

Alas, the book has taken in literati over here as well [with the notable exception of Cynthia Ozick, who contended that it was ultimately an exercise in exculpation that metaphorically depicted the German people as somehow unaware of what was being done in their name]. The movie version offers a plentitude of nudity and simulated sex with a plentifully nude Kate Winslet as the Nazi war criminal.

I've tried to point out the sheer lack of historicity or profundity in our efforts to link Hitler [and Nazis in general] with unconventional sex.

I touched on these themes a few years back in a "Slate" column on the Hitler-was-homosexual claim, a claim that implicitly linked homosexual behavior to Hitler's criminal pathology.

And I devoted a chapter of my book "Explaining Hitler" to attempting to discredit the emblematic Hitler perversion rumor, the Geli Raubal story: An effort by Nazi defectors and Freudians to prove that Hitler was really, really bad because of an apocryphal sexual perversion he practiced with his half-niece, Geli, who committed suicide before he became Führer. [As if, if it weren't for all that, he'd have turned out OK]]. But my efforts to disprove this tall tale didn't stop supposedly literary novelists such as Ron Hansen, Norman Mailer, and lesser lights from taking it seriously.

And now the "missing testicle" is back. One of the most widespread urban legends about Hitler is that he was monorchid, and the supposedly missing testicle has seemed—to many who should know better—not just a minor deformity but the key to Hitler's psyche.

There is even a school of Freudian "psycho-historians" who view Hitler's putatively half-empty scrotal sack as the root cause of his murderous character, his sexuality, and his anti-Semitism. The rumor offers one-stop shopping for Hitler explainers.

This is a theory I thought I'd put an end to. Back in 1995 I published a prequel-like excerpt from my Hitler book in "The New Yorker" in which I made reference to the persistence of the one-testicle legend, including dubious, then-new reports that the testicle had been lost when the child Hitler—I'm not making this up—took part in an ill-advised barnyard prank in which he attempted to urinate down the mouth of a billy goat.

Shortly after the "New Yorker" piece appeared, I received a letter from one Gertrude Kurth, a psychoanalyst who during the war had participated in an OSS-sponsored attempt to evaluate "the mind of Adolf Hitler". In conjunction with the study's author, Walter C. Langer, she had tracked down Hitler's family doctor, Dr. Eduard Bloch, then a Jewish refugee living in the Bronx, N.Y. Bloch had uneqivocally affirmed that he had examined Hitler during his childhood and found him "genitally normal."

End of story?

Unfortunately, no. Now comes a reporter from the London tabloid the "Sun", one Alex Peake, who in a 19 November issue claims a new document has surfaced, the alleged testament of a priest who took the confession of one Johan Jambor. Jambor, we are told, was a German battlefront medic serving with Hitler during the 1916 battle of the Somme. According to Mr. Peake, Jambor "died aged 94 in 1985, but had told his secret to priest Franciszek Pawlar, who kept a note of their conversation".

Peake's story goes on:

"Johan's friend Blassius Hanczuch confirmed the priest's account of how the medic saved Hitler's life. He said:

"In 1916 they had their hardest fight in the Battle of the Somme.

"For several hours, Johan and his friends picked up injured soldiers. He remembers Hitler.

"They called him the 'Screamer.' He was very noisy. Hitler was screaming 'help, help.'

"His abdomen and legs were all in blood. Hitler was injured in the abdomen and lost one testicle. His first question to the doctor was: 'Will I be able to have children?' "

Blassius said that when the Nazis swept to power Johan began to suffer nightmares and blame himself for saving Hitler.

Astonishingly—though Peake neither produced the priest's document nor gave any further evidence of the existence of the supposed corroborating witness, and such serious broadsheets such as the "Telegraph" in the United Kingdom, as well as print and electronic media on both sides of the Atlantic, picked up his story and repeated it as gospel along with sniggering headlines and references to the dirty wartime ditty [sung to the tune of "The Colonel Bogey March"] that begins with the line "Hitler has only got one ball. ..."]

It is true that Hitler was wounded during the battle of the Somme.

The most reliable recent biographer Ian Kershaw says he was wounded in "the left thigh," not "the abdomen" as the Sun's perhaps mythical medic Jambor has it. And it's not unlikely this injury was the source of the dirty ditty.

But that's the only nugget, so to speak, of Peake's tale that appears to have any substantiation.

I've e-mailed him twice asking where this alleged priestly document may be found and why it couldn't be photocopied. Asked him as well where this alleged corroborating friend Hanczuch might be reached and interviewed. No reply from Mr. Peake so far.

The literature about Hitler is littered with hoaxes and urban legends, and so I call on Mr. Peake and the "Sun" to prove that this is not another one of them, that they haven't been taken in their eagerness.

But I'm still left wondering about the source of this eagerness. Why are so many so eager to believe, as the "Sun's headline put it, that "Hitler HAD only got one ball"?

Even if it were true, what would it prove?

The nonsensical Freudian theories about Hitler's monorchism are generally based on the idea that it was a condition he had from birth or one that developed in his pubescence, as is true for many males, mostly with little consequence.

[Monorchism can refer to a testicle that never descends into the scrotum or one that descends but later retracts into the body].

It hardly needs to be pointed out that we'd live in a much more dangerous world if all monorchid youths grew up to be Hitlers.

Here's an example from one of the leading psycho-historians, the late Williams College history professor Robert Waite, author of "The Psychopathic God: Adolf Hitler".

After detailing a host of supposedly deleterious consequences monorchism may have on the emerging character, he adds:

"Monorchid boys favor symbolic substitutes for the missing testicle. … Patients may be excessively concerned about eyes. Hitler's eyes were particularly important to him. … The adult Hitler was aware of their power and practiced 'piercing stares' in front of the mirror. He also played games with his eyes. He would slowly cross them in looking at people or would stare them down".

Ooh, scary, people.

Of course, the supposed battlefield injury itself sounds painful, even traumatic, but again: enough to make Hitler Hitler? A factor of his character or ideological formation? In fact, Ian Kershaw in his biography makes clear that Hitler "came to hate Jews during his time in Vienna," years before the war.

And yet once again there seems to be a longing to believe what may turn out to be a shabby hoax. I think a clue to it can be found in the alleged words of the alleged medic, the poor, addled Johan Jambor: According to his friend, "[W]hen the Nazis swept to power Johan began to suffer nightmares and blame himself for saving Hitler".

It was Johan Jambor who could have spared us. Hitler wasn't the fault of the German people; he was the fault of this one German, Johan Jambor—and the one missing ball. If only Jambor hadn't "saved Hitler," all the millions of "good Germans" who, for some inexplicable reason, followed Hitler slavishly wouldn't have to find excuses.

This has always been my problem with films like the German-made "Downfall", which while initially being taken seriously by many, many film critics has found its true level as a YouTube camp joke.

"Downfall" purports to offer the "inside story" of the last days of Hitler in his Berlin Bunker and implicitly makes the case that the Holocaust wasn't the fault of the German people—no, they were victims, too—but rather of one man, Hitler, and the small coterie of madmen and evil women surrounding him.

Nothing to do with Germany's eager reception of exterminationist anti-Semitism.

The only good use for scurrilous sexual rumors about Hitler was the use found for them by contemporary opponents of Hitler who sought to discredit him during his rise to power.

In my book I wrote about the brave, almost-forgotten, anti-Hitler journalists of Munich, Hitler's hometown, particularly the reporters and editors of the Social Democratic paper the "Munich Post". These journalists would exploit anything to smear Hitler and in fact found—and published—far more serious and disturbing grounds to fear and reject him [such as the initial blue prints for the Endlösung, or Final Solution].

But if ridicule of his peculiarities, sexual and otherwise, would help, they were not above it. Either way, the German people managed to avert their eyes.

But that was then. There's no excuse now for this incessant dwelling on Hitler's sexuality, as if it tells us anything about the true nature of his evil. No, all the obsession can tell us about is the way the culture as a whole exhibits a refusal to face the profundity and complexity of evil and instead—with some honorable exceptions—prefers to escape responsibility for Hitler and the Holocaust by blaming it all on ludicrously unserious and ahistorical sexual mythologies, and the Freudian-influenced notion that all behavior has a sexual explanation at heart.

In a way, the focus on Hitler's alleged sexual abnormality becomes the missing testicle of the German nation: the monocausal monorchid exculpation for the guilt for mass murder. Let's not encourage it.

Ron Rosenbaum is the author of "The Shakespeare Wars" and "Explaining Hitler". His latest book is "How the End Begins: The Road to a Nuclear World War III".

of the Somme.

"For several hours, Johan and his friends picked up injured soldiers. He remembers Hitler.

"They called him the 'Screamer.' He was very noisy. Hitler was screaming 'help, help.'

"His abdomen and legs were all in blood. Hitler was injured in the abdomen and lost one testicle. His first question to the doctor was: 'Will I be able to have children?' "

Blassius said that when the Nazis swept to power Johan began to suffer nightmares and blame himself for saving Hitler.

It is true that Hitler was wounded during the battle of the Somme. The most reliable recent biographer Ian Kershaw says he was wounded in "the left thigh," not "the abdomen" as the Sun's perhaps mythical medic Jambor has it. And it's not unlikely this injury was the source of the dirty ditty.

But that's the only nugget, so to speak, of Peake's tale that appears to have any substantiation. I've e-mailed him twice asking where this alleged priestly document may be found and why it couldn't be photocopied. Asked him as well where this alleged corroborating friend Hanczuch might be reached and interviewed. No reply from Mr. Peake so far. The literature about Hitler is littered with hoaxes and urban legends, and so I call on Mr. Peake and the "Sun" to prove that this is not another one of them, that they haven't been taken in their eagerness.

The nonsensical Freudian theories about Hitler's monorchism are generally based on the idea that it was a condition he had from birth or one that developed in his pubescence, as is true for many males, mostly with little consequence. [Monorchism can refer to a testicle that never descends into the scrotum or one that descends but later retracts into the body]. It hardly needs to be pointed out that we'd live in a much more dangerous world if all monorchid youths grew up to be Hitlers.

Here's an example from one of the leading psycho-historians, the late Williams College history professor Robert Waite, author of "The Psychopathic God: Adolf Hitler". After detailing a host of supposedly deleterious consequences monorchism may have on the emerging character, he adds, "Monorchid boys favor symbolic substitutes for the missing testicle. …

Patients may be excessively concerned about eyes. Hitler's eyes were particularly important to him. … The adult Hitler was aware of their power and practiced 'piercing stares' in front of the mirror. He also played games with his eyes. He would slowly cross them in looking at people or would stare them down". Ooh, scary, people.

Even if the "Sun" document is not a hoax, it complicates these theories, because it posits that Hitler lost his testicle as an adult and thus presumably developed much of his character in a blissfully two-balled state. Of course, the supposed battlefield injury itself sounds painful, even traumatic, but again: enough to make Hitler Hitler? A factor of his character or ideological formation? In fact, Ian Kershaw in his biography makes clear that Hitler "came to hate Jews during his time in Vienna," years before the war.

Here we can see the appeal of this story, fable, fabrication, or whatever you want to call it: It wasn't the Western democracies who failed to save the world from Hitler with their fatal appeasing weakness. It was Johan Jambor who could have spared us. Hitler wasn't the fault of the German people; he was the fault of this one German, Johan Jambor—and the one missing ball. If only Jambor hadn't "saved Hitler," all the millions of "good Germans" who, for some inexplicable reason, followed Hitler slavishly wouldn't have to find excuses.

This has always been my problem with films like the German-made "Downfall", which while initially being taken seriously by many, many film critics has found its true level as a YouTube camp joke. "Downfall" purports to offer the "inside story" of the last days of Hitler in his Berlin Bunker and implicitly makes the case that the Holocaust wasn't the fault of the German people—no, they were victims, too!—but rather of one man, Hitler, and the small coterie of madmen and evil women surrounding him. Nothing to do with Germany's eager reception of exterminationist anti-Semitism.

The only good use for scurrilous sexual rumors about Hitler was the use found for them by contemporary opponents of Hitler who sought to discredit him during his rise to power. In my book I wrote about the brave, almost-forgotten, anti-Hitler journalists of Munich, Hitler's hometown, particularly the reporters and editors of the Social Democratic paper the "Munich Post". These journalists would exploit anything to smear Hitler and in fact found—and published—far more serious and disturbing grounds to fear and reject him [such as the initial blue prints for the Endlösung, or Final Solution]. But if ridicule of his peculiarities, sexual and otherwise, would help, they were not above it. Either way, the German people managed to avert their eyes.

- Ron Rosenbaum is the author of "The Shakespeare Wars" and "Explaining Hitler". His latest book is "How the End Begins: The Road to a Nuclear World War III".

Did Hitler really only have ONE testicle? A historian sorts the extraordinary truth from the far-flung myths about the Führer
By Andrew Roberts
Mail OnLine
20 November 2008

The Peake story is probably merely the latest in a very long line of unfounded rumours about the most evil tyrant of the 20th century.

Hitler did in fact have only one ball, the "Sun" claimed in an exclusive yesterday. The paper claims to have proof he lost it in the battle of the Somme in 1916. "Until now there has never been complete proof Hitler was monorchic," reports Alex Peake.

Steady on, Mr Peake. Greater historians than you have claimed things about Hitler that turned out to be false. Maybe, like the Hitler diaries, the story is a load of balls.

It has been over thirty years since the master forger Konrad Kujau had his fifteen minutes of fame. Kujau managed to fool "Stern" magazine in Germany and the "Sunday Times" into believing that Hitler had secretly kept a diary.

On 25 April 1983, "Stern" went public with the sensational story that Hitler’s diaries – which Kujau had penned in the late 70s and early 80s – had surfaced and that the history of the century had to be rewritten. By 6 May, it had become clear that two of the most venerable German and British publications had become the laughing stock of their nations. While no-one still believes that Hitler kept a diary, many other untrue facts about Hitler have been surprisingly resilient

But, assuming it isn't, how does the revelation affect the veracity of other claims made in the song that British Second World War troops sang to the tune of Colonel Bogey?

The first verse goes:

Hitler has only got one ball,
The other is in the Albert Hall,
His mother, the dirty bugger,
Chopped it off when he was small.

Intriguing. It seems unlikely that Hitler's ball would have made the journey from the Somme to the Albert Hall. In another version, it is "in the Free Trade Hall".

A third has "the kitchen wall".

If Frau Hitler did indeed chop off her son's ball, why would she post it to one of several leading British concert halls? Much more likely, surely, that she put it on her kitchen wall for safekeeping (possibly because she had a presentiment that her son's body parts would prove posthumously valuable on eBay).

We haven't even considered the possibility that it was Göring not Hitler who was monorchic - something claimed in another version of the song:

Göring has only got one ball.
Hitler's [are] so very small
Himmler's so very similar
And Göbbels has no balls at all.

Fascinating. When were Hitler and Himmler's genitals compared? Are we to suppose both Göbbels' parents mutilated him? Clearly more research needs to be done.

Visitors to London’s Albert Hall are often puzzled by the absence of a particular attraction – namely Adolf Hitler’s testicle, which a popular World War II song suggested was on display in the concert venue.

To save you a trip, the furry Teutonic organ is not actually there.

Historians have puzzled over the missing ball for over six decades.

The riddle of the Führer’s scrotum is just one of the enduring myths and stories that have grown up around Hitler since his death in the ruins of Berlin.

According to some weird myths about the Führer, Hitler only had sex with his clothes on.

Some believe that Hitler was asexual and so obsessed with hygiene that he would only have sex with his clothes on.

Speaking at the Cheltenham Festival of Literature about his new Nazi-era novel, "Zone of Interest", novelist Martin Amis explained Hitler would stand at a distance from mistress Eva Braun and achieve orgasm by simply watching her lift her skirt.

Another Hitler myth is that the dictator only had one ball.

And reports as recent as 2008 continue to insist it is true, the mirror.co.uk reported.

Based on accounts by a German army medic, who apparently saved Hitler's life during WW1,

Hitler may have lost a testicle during the Battle of the Somme in 1916.

It is also believed that Hitler was a superstitious man who would never take off his coat in public for fear something awful would befall him.

Most believe the dictator ended his days in his Bunker by committing suicide, but one theory suggests he actually lived to a ripe old age in sunny Argentina.

According to British journalists Gerrard Williams and Simon Dunstan in their book "Grey Wolf: The Escape Of Adolf Hitler" Hitler was an old man when he died there in 1962.

They say skull fragments which were used to confirm his death of a gunshot wound to the head, actually belong to a young woman

It is perhaps inevitable that someone who caused as much misery as he did should be surrounded by such a welter of unsubstantiated gossip, half-truths, innuendos, weird theories and pure lies, as we search for explanations about what drove this extraordinary, complicated, ultimately satanic individual.

The allegation that Hitler lost his testicle at the battle of the Somme has, in fact, been around for decades, and of course formed the basis of the morale-boosting ditty 'Hitler has only got one ball', supposedly written in 1939 and sung uproariously by every schoolboy since.

Yet it was no more true than the subsequent assertions that Heinrich Himmler "has something similar", or that "poor old Göbbels has no balls at all".

Hitler's conscientious physician Dr Theodor Morell, who knew every inch of the Führer intimately and had the trust and affection of his patient, certainly made no mention of it, and neither do any contemporaneous or subsequent medical records.

The unsubstantiated claims of a friend of a long forgotten German army medic are frankly unconvincing as evidence, and no autopsy could be carried out on the charred remnants of the Führer's corpse.

So the claim that Hitler was monorchic [the medical term for having one testicle] must join the many other weird assertions that have been made about him over the 125 plus years since his birth in 1889.

There were tales, for example, of the infant Hitler having his penis bitten off by a goat into whose mouth he was attempting to urinate.

And respectable modern medical journals have even published articles on the supposed potty-training techniques used by his mother.

Many different theories have been adduced for why Hitler hated the Jews, from his catching syphilis from a Jewish prostitute, via his feeling cheated because the Jewish Dr Eduard Bloch failed to save his mother from dying of breast cancer, to the Jewish professors who turned him away from the Visual Arts Academy of Vienna.

Some claim he had nothing against the Jews personally; he just used them as a scapegoat in order to become Chancellor of Germany.

And then there is his sexuality. Dr Lothar Machtan of Bremen University recently claimed that not only was Hitler a promiscuous homosexual before coming to power in 1933, and a severely repressed one afterwards, but that he instituted the Night of the Long Knives massacre of July 1934 [when he killed 150 of his own Brownshirt supporters] to cover up this guilty secret.

According to Dr Machtan, Hitler was an insatiably promiscuous and predatory homosexual, who acted out his crushes on chauffeurs, fellow soldiers, Viennese rent-boys and casual street pick-ups.

It is not only his sexual reputation that was blackened: according to a former comrade of Hitler's from the trenches, Hans Mend, his comrades used to put boot blacking on the future Führer's penis when he was asleep in the trenches, which Dr Machtan describes as "evidently a common occurrence" in the German army in the Great War.

Yet although Mend, nicknamed "the Ghost Rider", did, indeed, serve in Hitler's unit, he was a blackmailing paedophile who wound up in prison for sex offences and had a series of unrelated money grievances against Hitler.

His death in Dachau has been taken as evidence that Hitler had him silenced because he knew of the Führer's supposed homosexuality.

But this is unfounded nonsense - Mend may just as easily have been incarcerated as a result of his unsavoury extra-curricular activities.

Incidentally, Hitler was also regularly accused of homosexuality by German Social Democrat and Communist newspapers before 1933, which made innuendos about the nature of his friendship with Rudolf Hess and Albert Speer, in particular.

But these slurs can be discounted because they were made for party political reasons.

In any case, his relationship with Eva Braun seems to have been genuine and casts serious doubts on any theory that he was gay.

Gossip also concerns Hitler's niece Geli Raubal, whose suicide led to many rumours about whether the two were having an incestuous affair.

On the morning of 19 September 1931, Raubal was found face down on the floor of their Munich apartment with a lung wound caused by Hitler's Walther 6.35 pistol.

From these facts and very few others, a writer called Ronald Hayman has constructed an ingenious theory which named Hitler as the killer, albeit with manslaughter as the crime rather than murder.

For the conspiracists, the fact that Hitler's policies led to the deaths of more than 50 million people worldwide is enough to convict him of Raubal's death, but he actually had an alibi for his whereabouts that morning.

After Hitler's death, the rumours and innuendo went into overdrive.

In January 1946, it was reported to SMERSH, the Soviet Army's counter-Intelligence agency, that Eva Braun's marriage certificate might have been forged in order to mislead Allied Intelligence into thinking the couple had died in the Reichs Chancellery Bunker, while in fact they had fled Germany.

In November 1946, a sealed bottle with a German label was found in the sea off Denmark with a message inside saying that Hitler was on board a Spanish submarine that had left Finland bound for Fascist Spain.

There were even suggestions made at the time that Hitler did not commit suicide at all, but was shot by his devoted valet, Heinz Linge.

That was the evidence given to SMERSH by the head of Hitler's bodyguard, SS Gruppenführer Hans Rattenhuber, who was in the Bunker at the time and recalled that between 3pm and 4pm on the day of Hitler's death:

"Linge came in and confirmed that Hitler was dead, saying that he'd had to carry out the hardest order the Führer had ever given him.

"I looked at Linge in surprise. He explained to me that before his death, Hitler ordered him to leave the room for ten minutes, then to return, wait ten more minutes and then carry out the order.

"Having said that, Linge quickly went to Hitler's room and returned with a Walther pistol, which he placed on the table before me. By its special external finish, I recognised it as the Führer's personal pistol.

"Now it was clear to me what Hitler's order had been. Obviously, Hitler, doubting the effectiveness of the poisons after all the injections he had been given for such a long time, ordered Linge to shoot him after he had taken the poison. Linge had shot Hitler".

In fact, the "hardest order" was to destroy Hitler's body before the Russians could use it as a trophy.

And the contemporaneous belief that a 12-year-old son of Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun had escaped to Czechoslovakia under the name Friedrich Schulz simply added grist to the Soviet Propaganda machine.

"It is supposed that [Martin] Bormann's aide-de-camp Friedrich Wilhelm Paustin tried to deliver Hitler's last will and the boy's photograph to Eva Braun's family,"recorded the Soviet news agency TASS about Hitler's son in 1946.

The sad truth is that these rumours say more about the human condition -in particular, our need to find over-arching, mono-causal explanations for the unexplainable evil of men such as Adolf Hitler- than it says about the banal yet monstrous subject himself. Of one thing we can be certain, however. Whatever the truth about Hitler's having only one ball, the other is not to be found, as the song says, in the Albert Hall.

It was only long after the war that the idea that Hitler really might have been monorchic gained some currency.

In the 1960s, the USSR released what was claimed to be a secret report on an autopsy Soviet pathologists had carried out on two badly burned bodies [presumed to be those of Hitler and his mistress Eva Braun] which they had found outside the Führerbunker in Berlin.

The report was republished in "The Death of Adolf Hitler: Unknown Documents from Soviet Archives", by Lev Bezymenski. However it is strongly suspected that the report was a hoax designed to discredit Hitler.

It certainly contradicts the testimony of German witnesses to the dictator’s last hours in important ways.

For example, it is generally accepted that while Braun committed suicide by taking cyanide, Hitler shot himself in the head (a much more soldierly thing to do].

However the Soviet doctors wrote that both the people they autopsied had died after they had bitten into cyanide capsules and that glass fragments had been found in the mouths of both corpses. [The male body had also been shot in the head -by someone else, presumably- after he had taken the poison.

The implication was that Hitler was too cowardly to shoot himself, and had an orderly put a bullet in his head to make himself look good to posterity once he had taken the coward’s way out). The report presented in Bezymenksi's book then goes on to state that the burned body had been identified as Hitler's in part because it had only one testicle.

Quite how Russian doctors were so certain Hitler exhibited this abnormality was not explained.

The truth is that almost no-one who survived the war could say for certain what Hitler’s genitals looked like.

The dictator was pathologically reluctant to let even his own personal doctors examine him intimately – in fact this reluctance is the main reason many people suspect he must have had some sort of deformity.

According to David Irving, the controversial right-wing historian and author of "The Secret Diaries of Hitler’s Doctor", Hitler’s principal doctor, Theodor Morrell, conducted many examinations of the rest of the Nazi warlord’s body [reporting he had no hair on his chest or back, had poor teeth and was bothered by a furred tongue], but was never allowed to go "further south".

On one occasion, when Hitler was asked to consent to an enema to relieve the symptoms of hepatitis, the Führer refused to let his doctor slip a tube up his "arse", and retired to a locked toilet to try to administer it himself.

If Hitler did have some sort of deformity, though, it may not have made him incapable of getting it up.

Most Nazis in Hitler’s inner circle believed he did have sex with Eva Braun, though only very occasionally [the couple generally slept in separate beds].

However, another Nazi doctor, Professor Doktor Hans Karl von Hasselbach, testified in 1951:

"Hitler had an extreme disinclination to let people see his body. Even I never saw him completely unclothed, let alone checked him over in that state".

Hasselbach went on to confirm that even members of the Nazi hierarchy suspected their Führer’s motives for this excessive modesty, but all he could offer was:

"Probably his former manservant Emil Maurice could give some information as to whether his sex organs were deformed; he dropped hints when we were in captivity".

Unfortunately, so far as we know, Maurice –who doubled as a hired thug and occasional hitman for the Führer– never did testify on this fascinating subject.

Unfortunately, so far as we know, Maurice –who doubled as a hired thug and occasional hitman for the Führer– never did testify on this fascinating subject.

Discovered in a Russian text by Intelligence officer Lev Bezymensky, the Russians captured a German guard who had witnessed the bodies of Hitler and Braun being taken from the Bunker to the garden, where they were burned and buried.

SMERSH apparently did not believe that the two bodies they dug up along with Göbbels and his wife were Adolf and Eva, but they didn't find their bodies anywhere else in the Bunker. They examined the bodies in detail.

The autopsy report:

"The teeth tell all. The autopsy report of the two bodies buried in the garden said that both had died after they had bitten into cyanide capsules: Glass fragments had been found in the mouths of both corpses. The male body had also been shot in the head - after he had taken the poison. And, like Hitler, the man had only one testicle".

This last remark is of course the one that needs further citation, but the authors treat it as a given and do not elaborate upon it.

This is unusual on the authors' part, to assume certain knowledge to be true, and it stuck out like a sore thumb from just about everything else they examined.

The copy of the autopsy report presented in Bezymenksi's book states that the burned body identified as Hitler's had one testicle. Later, he notes that this had not been mentioned in the literature, and that one of Hitler's doctors commented that the Führer refused to have medical check-ups [which Bezymenski guesses may have been due to Hitler's abnormality].

During the first weeks of the year 2000, a Russian news broadcast sparked fresh interest in Adolf Hitler's Bunker suicide.

The broadcast, following reports by former Soviet intelligence agents who claim to have buried the remains of Hitler and his wife Eva Braun in Magdeburg, Germany, said that much evidence was officially ignored at the time, and that the buried remains may not be of the German leader after all.

The autopsy report said that the male body had only one testicle. Aides reportedly had doused the corpse with gasoline and burned it to prevent the body from falling into Soviet hands.

Its disappearance prompted reports that Hitler may have escaped .

Hitler was secret crystal meth addict – but he DID have two balls, claims new documentary
Adolf Hitler was a regular user of the highly addictive drug crystal meth, according to new research.
By Daniel Macadam
Sunday Express
Published: 12 October 2014 | Updated: 26 January 2015

[AP] Adolf HitlerAdolf Hitler was a secret crystal meth user.

A 47-page wartime dossier compiled by American intelligence officials reveals the Führer took an incredible 74 different medications including crystal methamphetamine.

Hitler is believed to have taken the powerful drug before a meeting with Italian fascist Benito Mussolini in the summer of 1943 when he ranted for two hours straight.

The notorious hypochondriac also had nine injections of methamphetamine during his final days in his Berlin bunker.

The American records, which feature in a Channel 4 documentary called "Hitler’s Hidden Drug Habit", contain the amazing revelation, but dispel the enduring myth that the dictator only had one testicle.

The line “Hitler has only got one ball – the other is in the Albert Hall” was a morale-booster during the Second World War.

So popular is this claim that many still believe Hitler was monorchid – the medical term for being born with one testicle.

But the records reject this idea, while also dismissing claims that Hitler was a predatory homosexual who killed 150 supporters to hide his sexuality.

An entry in an American Military Intelligence Report from November 1945 based on medical records said: “He was neither a pervert nor a homosexual. His sexual organs showed no indication of abnormality”.

Was Adolf Hitler a Sexual Pervert?

During World War 2, the Allies started many rumors about Hitler for propaganda purposes. For example, when France surrendered, Hitler was shown over and over in the newsreels as apparently dancing a jig. After the war, the truth was released. The "jig" was actually the result of some fancy photo shop work by clever Allied intelligence.

Other rumors circulated about Hitler was that he had only one testicle (this was apparently supposed to prove that Hitler was not normal and, possibly, explain why he was so mad at the world) and also that Hitler was a sexual pervert.

Again, after the war, Hitler's doctors reported that Hitler had two testicles so he was not abnormal in that sense.

Also, those persons closest to Hitler and to Eva Braun, Hitler's mistress and wife of one day, reported that Hitler's sex life was perfectly normal.

Indeed, Hitler's sex life was so normal, it would be considered boring by today's standards.

Many German beauties [and some British and American women], threw themselves at Hitler and he could have had almost any women he wanted. Instead, he seemed to prefer "typical" German women such as the plain Eva Braun whom he seemed to genuinely care for.

Eva was his mistress for many years, but Hitler kept the affair from the German people because he did not want to upset their sensibilities [how conventional can you get?].

When Hitler had visitors who did not know about his relationship with Eva, Eva was banned from the social gatherings. She often spent these "banned" periods talking with Albert Speer, a close associate of Hitler's, who had a genuine liking for her. When Hitler's inner circle had a social gathering, the ban was not in effect because they all knew about Eva. Eva could then join the close friends which often included Speer.

Friends and relatives of Eva Braun say she giggled upon seeing a photograph of British prime minister Neville Chamberlain sitting atop a sofa in Hitler's flat in Munich in 1938.

Braun remarked: "If only he knew what goings-on that sofa has seen".

While sex appears to have occurred, it will not have been much. Hitler's valet, Heinz Linge, said in a television interview that his wife was Hitler's housekeeper, and she never found stains on the sheets.

A possible evidence of perversion with Hitler was with Renate Müller, a singer and one of the most successful actresses in Germany, incident.

Once, she appeared dejected at the studio where she worked.

Her superior inquired why, and she told him of her one-night stand with Hitler. They had both undressed, whereupon Hitler lay on the floor and begged her to kick him.

She declined. He flagellated himself verbally until she acceded to his wishes. This excited him much, and he begged for more.

The truth about this alleged event will probably never be known .

Renate Müller apparently committed suicide shortly after the event was supposed to have taken place.

Hitler summed up his love life best when he told someone that he had had many disappointments in his love affairs.

t appears that even when his love affairs were consummated, they were about as exciting as the love life of Ma and Pa Kettle. Hitler was into power and not sex!

The papers partly draw on interviews with Hitler’s physician Dr Theodor Morell, who prescribed him with a range of pills including one called Pervitin containing crystal meth.

Dr Morell also gave Hitler Brom-Nervacit, a barbiturate, Eukodal, which contained morphine, and bulls’ semen, to give him a testosterone boost.

Dr. Morell had been a card-carrying Nazi since 1933, and had sufficient connections to land him at a party at the Berghof –Hitler’s mountain party pad– so he could meet the man.

He assured Hitler he could “cure” him within a year, though what he promised to cure remains somewhat vague.

It has been said by historians that Hitler suffered from irritable bowel syndrome, skin lesions, coronary sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease and syphilis.

Dr. Morell began treating Hitler with his own special brew of vitamins and hydrolyzed E. coli bacteria, a little cocktail he called Mutaflor.

The Mutaflor successfully cured whatever had been ailing Hitler, which ensured Dr. Morell a permanent seat at the table of Reich insiders.

When Hitler would feel groggy, Dr. Morell would shoot him up with a mixture of water and something called Vitamulin, which he carried around in unmarked gold packets.

A member of the SS tested it and found that it contained a noteworthy amount of methamphetamine.

Before long, the Führer was addicted. Hitler dismissed Morell about a week before his suicide by gunshot on 30 April 1945.

Morell left behind a supply of medications, but because Hitler’s final wishes involved the immolation of his and Eva Braun’s bodies after their deaths, a true and accurate autopsy was probably never done – in spite of the 1970 claims by the Soviet press.

So we’ll never know the truth about the extent to which the medications prescribed by Morell were ravaging Hitler's body and mind. Morell himself died of a stroke in 1948 before his side of the story could be fully explored.

Methamphetamine makes users feel very alert and energised, but can also make them agitated, paranoid and aggressive.

Bill Panagopoulos, an American collector who discovered the dossier, said:

"Morell was a quack and a fraud and a snake oil salesman.

"He should not have been practising medicine anywhere outside a veterinary clinic".

He added:

"Some [of the drugs] were innocuous, some not so innocuous, some poisonous. Did he develop a dependence on any of these drugs? Which of these drugs, if any, were addictive? And did he become addicted to them?

"I’d be interested to know what the combination of these medications would do to someone who’s otherwise in good health".

A new documentary, to be aired this weekend by Britain's Channel 4, digs into the Führer's "hidden drug habit". Based on details in a 47-page American military dossier compiled during the war, Hitler was taking a cocktail of 74 different drugs, including a form of what is now commonly known as crystal meth. He also took "barbiturate tranquilizers, morphine, bulls' semen," according to reports.

The revelations aren't exactly new. Methamphetamines, which were pioneered in Germany at the end of the 19th century, were used by various armies during World War II as stimulants to aid fatigued soldiers. The drug was popularly consumed in Germany as Pervitin, a pill Hitler took among his various medications.

As a young soldier in the Wehrmacht, Heinrich Böll -who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1972- wrote forlorn, bleak letters home. "Perhaps you could obtain some more Pervitin so that I can have a backup supply?" he requested in a 1940 letter, cited by German publication "Der Spiegel".

The Nazi leader was supposedly injected with extracts from bull's testicles to boost his libido -- the Führer needed to cut a virile figure in public and, as reports suggest, keep up with Eva Braun, his much younger consort. Other medicines were aimed at combating a host of Hitler's maladies, ranging from stomach cramps to symptoms related to a potential bipolar disorder.

Hitler's own addictions shouldn't obscure the vast scale drugs like methamphetamine were consumed by both sides in World War II. Millions of tablets of various narcotics were issued as stimulants to soldiers. The nickname for Pervitin in Germany was Panzerschokolade, or "tank chocolate."

"Two tablets taken once eliminate the need to sleep for three to eight hours, and two doses of two tablets each are normally effective for 24 hours," advised the Nazi military command, in a communique released in 1942. The German invasions of Poland and France, says "Der Spiegel", were driven by soldiers hooked on meth and copious amounts of alcohol.

The drug's ill effects were less known, including insomnia, hallucinations, erratic behavior and a dulling of brain functions over time. The trope of the "Zombie" Nazi soldier is a popular one in science fiction - and, as these reports all reveal, that may not just be because of the evils carried out by Hitler's murderous regime.

Ishaan Tharoor
The Washington Post
14 October 2014

Historian rejects claim Adolf Hitler had a micropenis
German dictator could have suffered from medical condition called "hypospadias"
Caroline Mortimer
The Independent
22 February 2016

A historian has urged caution over claims that Adolf Hitler had a micropenis.

In a book published last year called "Hitler’s Last Day: Minute by Minute", two historians - Jonathan Mayo and Emma Craigie - claimed the German dictator suffered from a condition that can lead to several complications with the penis - one of means the man has a "micropenis".

The claim has resurfaced and was picked up by media outlets around the world.

However, in an email interview with "The Independent", Ms Craigie urged caution surrounding the reports, saying that any suggestion he had a micro-penis because he potentially suffered from hypospadias was a "leap" and that she had not seen any evidence to suggest anything more than general hypospadias.

Ms Craigie and Mr Mayo write in their booke: "Hitler himself is believed to have had two forms of genital abnormality: an undescended testicle and a rare condition called penile hypospadias in which the urethra opens on the underside of the penis".

German historian, Volker Ulrich, has previously claimed he uncovered prison records showing Hitler did have had an undescended right testicle - confirming rumours which have circulated since the Second World War.

The records, made by medical officer Dr Josef Steiner Brin when Hitler was briefly jailed for a failed coup in 1923, said that he had "right-sided cryptorchidism" but was otherwise "healthy" and "strong".

Cryptorchidism is caused by a testicle not descending into the scrotum during puberty.

Let’s clear something up about this story about Hitler’s penis

We actually don’t know if Hitler had a micro-penis or not. What his doctor’s diaries reveal is that Hitler was prescribed hormones and amphetamines to help with sexual activity, but as far as the diaries go, there’s no mention of penile hypospadias.

The only evidence for the claim is the claim itself, in the book "Hitler’s Last Day: Minute to Minute", which reads:

"Hitler himself is believed to have had two forms of genital abnormality: an undescended testicle and a rare condition called penile Hypospadius [sic] in which the urethra opens on the underside of the penis".

The problem is: Believed by whom? The authors of this book?

Despite the fact that they’re being called "historians," that’s a claim that’s a little bit less than honest, too. Emma Craigie is a novelist, and it’s not really clear what Jonathan Mayo does for a living other than writing books for what appears to be a "Minute by Minute" series, also featuring D-Day, the sinking of the 'Titanic' and JFK’s assassination. Suffice it to say, Craigie and Mayo are not scholars. They sell schlocky non-fiction that isn’t held up to standards of peer-review, or, I don’t know, integrity.

The reason it matters is that, first of all, it’s not the truth. Or, we don’t know that it’s the truth. Craigie and Mayo can’t supply a picture of Hitler’s penis or a documented description of Hitler’s penis by someone who saw it. There’s been speculation about Hitler’s ability to perform sexually for a long time, but Craigie and Mayo went the extra distance to suggest that not only did Hitler have some kind of penile dysfunction, but that he had a small penis with a urethral opening on the side.

All of which is a shot at Hitler’s masculinity. Take the "Telegraph" article that took off Monday morning, which opens with 'It has long been suspected that Hitler’s conquest of Europe was an attempt to compensate for a lack of potency elsewhere' and goes on to call penile hypospadias 'embarrassing' and reprint the lyrics of the children’s rhyme "Hitler’s Got Only One Ball". A-plus journalism, guys.

The second reason it matters is that this is all part of a long-standing effort in popular culture [which is what Hitler’s Last Day: Minute by Minute is a part of — not serious historical academia, make no mistake}to paint Hitler as effeminate and gay and by doing so, demonize him.

Take the "History Channel’s feature '10 Things You Didn’t Know About Hitler', which goes so far as to call him a "mama’s boy" and suggest that he preferred the company of men. It’s presumed from the get-go that these are coded "bad," that having a close relationship with your mother makes you effeminate, that being gay makes you effeminate, that having a small penis makes you effeminate, that having sexual dysfunction makes you effeminate, that having one testicle makes you effeminate, and that being effeminate makes you less of a man, that feminine means, somehow, evil.

-- Excerpt from "About Hitler’s 'Micropenis' and Proliferating Homophobic Ideas"
by Rebecca Vipond Brink
24 February 2017